Oh dear lord. I've read this whole thread, and there's been some drama-whoring, prompting me to post.
A ScubaBoard Staff Message...
name removed at OP's request
With about 30 pages of professed butt-hurt and a good deal of grand-standing over having an f-bomb dropped after a dive, might as well name its name.
Personally, I'm not their biggest fan, which stems from the fact that I paid a "drive out" cost of about $1200.00 to get my husband and myself certified as OW. I got stuck with a $150.00 FedEx bill on some gear for the OW cert. When I came back for AOW cert for myself, I was then handed a list of about $1200.00 of stuff that I "had" to buy as a requirement for the AOW class, and when handed the list, the fool behind the counter, literally, walked out of the shop without explanation. Yea...that was weird. Supposedly, he's just an anomolous weird dude. But it was enough for me to buy my gear elsewhere, complete the AOW cert I'd paid for, and find another shop.
I'm high maintenance like that.
Anyway, with that said, sounds like he actually did hotpuppy right: they inquired of the situation, gave him a refund. They didn't hang the instructor in effigy, but I doubt that was called for. In this regard:
The instructor at issue was my OW instructor and my AOW instructor. He's awesome. Period. He's incredibly qualified, knowledgable, and patient, and he ALWAYS puts safety first. Conservatively so.
While it is possible that Instructor somehow lost his mind and went off like a hair-trigger a$$hole at hotpuppy, or was just out of line, I call BS.
For one thing, Hotpuppy's been too blatantly calling for his head, shopping for sympathy on this thread, and hiding some prima donna drama llama-ing behind a "noble high road." For another, I do know Instructor and have made a decent number of dives with him as an Instructor.
My own AOW cert was one of those experiences in Lake Travis that ended up so bad, it was actually comedy gold:
Instructor and I did the AOW cert early last fall in preparation for going to dive the TX Clipper together. The lake was down about 40' and the weekend of our cert, it rained like the great Biblical Flood, turning Windy Point into a mud-filled, mucked up vat of no-vis goodness.
Instructor had 2 students: me, brand newbie, back from Hawaii, with like 15 dives or so, and a dude who had like 200 dives since he was an adrenaline junkie who had been diving using his brother's C-card to dive since he was 15. Dude was heading off that week, with his brother, to go great white shark diving in Australia and needed his own AOW card finally.
For an instructor, that's probably not the ideal match up of students. And to add to the mix, I'm also a Type I, insulin dependent, juvenile diabetic and have been for 25 years - since I was 9 years old. Climbing up and down the rocky cliffs of Lake Travis (and they were rocky with the lake being so far down) didn't exactly add to the peace and enjoyment of the experience and stuff like that does pose a risk for those of us having to worry about keeping our sugar levels up enough. I'm also a "type A" personality and don't like to go in the water with a$$clowns and don't have much reserve in saying so
So, we were under pressure to "get the cert done" and also dealing with some pretty stressful conditions.
Instructor isn't the type to put divers in the water without a decent plan. Nor is he the type to deconstruct in a SNAFU. In this case, for example, I got stuck on the deep dive in one of those idiotic pecan grove trees in Lake Travis. I think we were at like 55 feet when it happened. The lake was so far down, that the bottom was maybe 80 feet. I lost a fin when that tree viciously assaulted me blind. Good times.
Instructor, however, was diligently watching both of us- despite the no-vis, and signalled me if I wanted to thumb the dive. But with the miserable conditions... no, I wasn't repeating it, we were getting this bitch done. So, we went slowly down to 75 feet, on the line, did the combo lock skill, and came back up. He went down ahead of us, but he was a good and competent Instructor.
During another dive, the night dive, adrenaline dude somehow lost his mask, cleaning it, right before we went down. The "wreck dive" was probably the best, trying to do that in the dark, with adrenaline dude's size 15 fins on me, but we were only at about 12 feet, so... hey
I've rambled on, but the point is this: I have made about 20 dives with Instructor and he's qualified, competent, incredibly attune to his students and safety. He isn't prone to lose his cool or mercilessly descend upon someone with a torrent of four-letter words.
If angry words ensued after a dive and someone even dropped an f-bomb, get over it. Get a refund. But going to PADI on this or desiring some apology written in blood or sympathy from Scubaboard sounds like hotpuppy is being a bit of a prima donna drama llama.
